Suzanne Tully McCarthy was born in 1936 in Roanoke, Virginia. She is of English, Scottish, Northern European, Scandinavian, and Germanic descent, with her maternal grandparents, Emma Row Arbenz and Herman Leonard Arbenz, hailing from Wheeling, West Virginia. Her paternal grandparents were Mary Clarcia Jarrell and Richard Grant Tully, with roots in West Virginia and Virginia. Suzanne pursued her education in mathematics, earning a B.A. from the College of William and Mary in 1957. She furthered her studies with an M.S. in numerical analysis from Johns Hopkins University in 1975.